Bushisms: A retrospective

Since the day he took office, President Bush’s colorful speech has created a stir. Even in his ultimate exit interview, with a flourish of self-deprecation, he said, “Sometimes you misunderestimated me.” Over the years his turns of phrases have been not so much controversial as they’ve been cryptic. Hard to categorize, they sometimes sound like a joke without a punch line or a Zen Koan, imparting indecipherable wisdom. But the best way to describe them comes from Jacob Weisberg, who has coined them Bushisms and for nearly a decade he has been collecting them. Jacob Weisberg joins us for a retrospective of these presidential gems. And like all retrospectives we hope to gain a new appreciation for the man responsible for this body of work. Jacob Weisberg is editor in chief of The Slate Group and author of George W. Bushisms : The Slate Book of The Accidental Wit and Wisdom of our 43rd President.